How Can I Tell if I’m Taking Fake Opioids?

If you’re taking pain pills recreationally, chances are, you have to source them from somewhere other than a pharmacy. That leads to increasing risks of the drug you think you’re taking not being present at all. Instead, today’s street drugs include counterfeit pills containing everything from stronger opioids like fentanyl to methamphetamine to benzodiazepines and even veterinary medications.

If you buy prescription pills on the street, it’s very likely to be some kind of opioid. The bad news is that fake prescription pills are also very likely to include extremely dangerous drugs like fentanyl. In fact, one DEA report showed that 6 out of 10 fake prescription pills they seized actually contained a potentially lethal (over)dose of fentanyl – an opioid that’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine.

How Common are Fake Opioids?

In 2021, the DEA seized some 20.4 million fake opioid pain pills. These drugs can often look extremely similar to the drugs they’re knocking off. And, with labels like Percocet, OxyContin, etc., it can be difficult to tell that you’re not taking the real thing.

With recent crackdowns on opioid prescriptions, it’s likely that fake opioids are more common than the real thing. This means that unless you get your pills from a pharmacy or someone you trust who go them from a pharmacy, you can’t be sure that your pain pills are genuine.

How Dangerous are Fake Pills?

According to the CDC, over 4.7% of deaths caused by overdose in 2021 were proven cases of fake opioids. In some states, that rate is as high as 15%. Those fake prescription pills included OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, Xanax, and Adderall, so not all of them were sold as opioids. However, almost all of them included fentanyl.

That translates to a devastatingly large number of overdose deaths. In 2021, 106,000 Americans died from an overdose, meaning almost 5,000 people are proven to have died after taking fake opioids and pills. Those numbers are the highest they’ve ever been, which is linked to the rise in synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are often significantly stronger than any other drug on the market.

In addition, with no dosing or quality control on fake opioids, you have no idea what you’re taking. A Percocet pill is dosed and rigorously checked for quality control. A fake Percocet may contain almost any amount of fentanyl and just one could send you into an overdose. And, according to the DEA, 60% of fake Percocet on the market has the ability to do so – dependent on your tolerance, metabolism, and genetics. That becomes even more dangerous if you’re buying Percocet in doses where you’d normally take more pills, because you have no idea of just one pill is enough to cause an overdose, let alone two or three.

It’s also a risk if you go to the hospital. If you tell hospital staff that you’ve been taking something like Vicodin, you’ll normally receive a single dose of Narcan, the overdose prevention drug. A single dose is enough to reverse an overdose for most pain pills. However, most fentanyl requires up to three doses to reverse the overdose, followed by longer term medical care because the drug lasts longer than the overdose prevention. Most Naloxone products are sold in doses of two, which means that if you’re using on your own, you’ll need two packs of Naloxone per person to use “safely”.

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Checking Your Pills

If you’re taking opioid prescription pain pills without a prescription, it’s important to do so safely. The best and only real safety measure is to take your drugs to a testing lab. Here, you can have your drugs tested to see if the contents are what you think they are, what the dosing is, and if there are any contaminates you should be aware of.

These services are often free or low cost. For example DanceSafe is a nonprofit center offering drug checking strips, so you can check for fentanyl and other contaminates in your home. The organization also has a lab, which you can sometimes use. In addition, DanceSafe sometimes has labs set up at events – which means you can always look for them if you live in an urban area. There are other organizations offering similar services, but DanceSafe is the only nonprofit drug checking company in the United States.

A drug test kit also isn’t a greenlight on your drugs. Instead, these kits look for red flags such as fentanyl or known contaminates. The DanceSafe kit looks for 100 different substances. It means it’s less likely that you’re taking fake opioids. However, you’ll need an actual lab test to see what your drugs actually are and if they are completely safe.

If you can’t order a test kit before you intend to take your pills, you can also try comparing your drugs to something you know is the real thing. That means having a package of the real thing on hand. For example, a friend might have a prescription which you can compare.

This means:

Comparing the packaging and looking for any differences
Looking at pill size and color and seeing if they are the same
Checking the listed dosage amount
Looking for irregularities in pill size, color, or contents
Breaking pills and seeing if they’re the same color inside

Prescription pills are always uniform in size, color, and contents. There are no irregularities from one to the next. Packaging is always sealed and always lists the dosage, the contents, and the brand. If not all of that is present, chances are, you’re taking fake pills.

However, fake opioids can be extremely convincing. It may be difficult to impossible to tell the real thing from the fake without a lab. So comparing your pills to the real thing isn’t a foolproof way of ensuring you’re taking “safe” pills. The only way to ensure you’re not taking fake pills is to have them lab tested or to buy them from a pharmacy.

Getting Help

If you or a loved one is struggling with substance abuse, it’s important to get help. That includes if you’re taking pills which you know could endanger you. Knowingly risking your life to get high is not a symptom of mental health or everything being okay. Often, it means you need mental health treatment and therapy – even if you’re not struggling with substance abuse problems or addiction.

Pain pills are popular, affordable, and are often considered safe. As a result, millions of Americans use them recreationally. Unfortunately, that’s becoming more and more dangerous as fake pills become more common. Today, there are millions of fake pain pills seized by the DEA every year. And, some 60% of those contain potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. Often, there’s no easy way to tell fake pills from the real thing. However, you can look for lab testing if you will use those pills anyway. The best option is to stay safe, don’t use pills, and ask for help if you can’t stop using on your own.

If you or your loved-one struggles from alcoholism or other substance abuse please contact us today and speak with one of our experienced and professional intake advisors about our alcohol rehab, detox, partial hospitalization, and residential treatment programs. 10 Acre Ranch also has specialty tracks like our pet friendly drug rehab and couples substance abuse treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

What Are Harm Reduction Strategies?

The primary goal of a harm reduction strategy for drug abuse is to accept that you can’t get someone to stop using, therefore you want them to use in as safe a manner as possible. This includes an approach for safer use, managed use, meeting people using substances “where they are at” and working to improve the conditions of substance abuse.

This is important because often the conditions of drug abuse are as dangerous as drug use itself. For example:

People cannot get high or use at home so they do so in public, which puts them at risk of injury, assault, and sexual assault.

People cannot access clean or safe needles and so share needles and put themselves and others at risk of transmitting STDs and infections.

People don’t have access to safe resources so find themselves using unsafe substances to get high. For example, cooking heroin for injection with water from a mud puddle. Or using unsafe drugs.

People don’t have the ability to easily tell if their drugs are safe or if they’ve been cut with a potentially harmful substance. This means they put themselves at risk of overdose every time they get high but often don’t have the self-control to not get high.

People struggle with substance use disorders and so cannot simply “quit” and when pushed into going cold turkey, often relapse and increase their risk of overdose because their tolerance has dropped.

People don’t have access to information about how to safely use drugs and so can significantly harm themselves while trying to self-inject, to use pipes, or to get high.

All of this means that people using are in danger from significantly more than “just” drug abuse. Harm reduction strategies work to reduce the harm implicit in drug abuse and in those factors surrounding drug abuse. That gives you or your loved on the chance to get better by ensuring that you can have as safe and as trauma-free of an experience as possible.

Harm Reduction Strategies You Can Adopt

an addiction treatment expert offers helping hand to a woman struggling with substance abuse

Harm reducing strategies mean taking steps to reduce the harm inherent in substance abuse. Some common steps include:

Acceptance – Illicit drug use is going to happen. Drug use is a complex phenomenon, and it can stem from a lot of factors like trauma, stress, genetic vulnerabilities, or simply a desire to use and get high. If someone is using and doesn’t want to get better, it’s important to accept that they are using and they are going to use. No amount of being upset, angry, or attempting intervention is likely to change that until they are ready to quit. This means accepting that drug use isn’t going away. Instead, you do care about that person, and you want them to use in as safe and as healthy a way as possible. That also means understanding that qualify of life, continuity of life, and individual happiness are more important than “quitting” drug use.

Providing Help – People who are struggling with substance abuse often need help to use safely. That means taking steps to ensure they have the means to do so. Often, it also means deliberately going out of your way to provide safe access to drugs, drug use, and preventive care. For many people, this step can feel like “Enabling” but as part of harm reduction, you’re accepting that drug use will happen and are taking the steps to make it as safe as possible. That can look like:

Keeping Narcan or Naloxone (at least 3 doses) on your person at all times.

Designating a room of your home for someone to use safely

Finding local supervised injection/consumption sites and driving your loved one there when they want to use

Ensuring access to safe and clean syringes

Finding safe-drug use information relevant to the drug(s) you or your loved one are using and following those

Finding drug test centers and paying for drug tests. Or, getting drug safety test kits like DanceSafe or equivalent kits

Focusing on safe usage with emphasis on sourcing quality drugs and using in a safe manner over not using at all

Intervening for safety reasons or not at all

Education – Harm reduction strategies always include education and learning, which may mean helping you or your loved one learn to cope with the real problems behind substance abuse. It can also mean working on strategies to improve quality of life, improve mental health, and improve other things that may contribute to drug abuse. In addition, it means learning how drug abuse and use disorders actually work, how they impact everyone involved, and how to cope with them in a healthy manner. Harm reduction strategies never work to minimize or ignore that illicit drug use can be extremely harmful, it just means accepting that it happens and you can’t prevent it happening, so you want it to happen in as safe of a way as possible.

For many people, taking harm reduction approaches to drug abuse means a considerable shift in mindset. For example, many of us are raised to see substance abuse as a personal failing or as someone choosing to do wrong. Learning how to use safely, how to reduce harm when using, and how to provide safe spaces to use means accepting that use will happen, meeting the user where they are, and taking a core step of saying “you and your health are more important than the fact that you use drugs”. You may have to overcome a lot of biases to actually reach that step. However, it will ensure that your loved one can move through addiction as safely as possible, so they have the chance to recover and to heal.

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Month: October 2023